


Slice Me Open

by nowaynotme



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Loneliness, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:38:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowaynotme/pseuds/nowaynotme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is lonely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slice Me Open

Sherlock has always felt alone. Not in the physical sense, although there has been much of that. No, this is the feeling you get when you realize you are different from everyone else and they hate you for it. He knows he is separate from humanity. Maybe they are right, that if you were to pull back his skin it would reveal circuitry instead of muscles and tendons. So he spends hours slashing line after line into his pale skin to prove he has blood in him. To see the red rather than the black of oil. (Human. Human.) The pain reminds him he can feel. It is beautiful in its own way. John would hate him for it.

Electric fear runs through him, a burning ache in his wrists. Don’t hate me, John. Don’t let John find out. Don’t let him hate you. And when they sit beside each other Sherlock can feel the inches between them. If only he could reach out and touch John. Would he shock the doctor with his wires mixed up in desperation? Would John shy away, uncertain how to love a machine?

No, cut, blood, human. Human.

Would John feel warm?

The space between them screams at Sherlock. (Touch me. Touch me. Please.) But he can’t.

So he runs. He is always running. The drugs help. (Don’t think about it.) They help him run when his body cannot.

He was four when he first heard the word. Lonely. He felt it on his tongue; let it seep down into his body. And it dawned on him, was that what it was when he felt so alone his bones ached? When Mycroft went away and left him with father? He once hid in a closet at the estate and waited for someone to find him. He waited for almost three days before he realized that no one was going to come looking for him. Then he went and blew up his bed.

He tried to do the same at 221B. Hid in his room for a week. No one came looking for him then either, John believed he was just sulking and would get over it in his own time.

Delete. (Don’t let it hurt you.)

His strangeness was used against him before he learned to use it as a weapon. Keep everyone out. Don’t let them get close. Don’t fall in love.

Don’t fall in love with John.

So he slices, he dices, he tears himself apart. At first it is an experiment. How quickly would a cut heal on his arm? His foot? His stomach? His back? Soon he is covered, and it is no longer for science. This is for pain. He has scars everywhere except his arms. They flow down his back onto his legs and pool into the insides of his thighs. He takes long strides to bother new cuts and whirls around to attack the ones that lay across his shoulder blades and his chest. He prays to no one in particular that John does not notice the day one opens up and blood seeps through his shirt.

(Sherlock, what is that?)

(A wound I received while on a case seems to have reopened. No matter, I will take care of it.)

He wonders when the day will come when he is made up more of scar tissue than skin. The detective was never one for knowing when to stop. (Stop.) He keeps going. He is alone. He is lonely.

It was almost inevitable for him to go too far one day. On this day, (Freak. Psychopath.) he feels more alone than ever. He tells John that he should not be disturbed and locks himself in his room.

He finds his razors. (Not enough. Not enough!) Knife, then. He keeps one under his pillow. Hurry. Pain. All he can think about is the release the pain gives him. Not enough. Keep going. Cut after cut all over his body until they start to overlap. He vaguely remembers thinking that his white sheets will be stained with all this blood. Stupid. He should have thought of that. Stupid. Machine. Monster. Psychopath. Freak.

No, human. Human. Human.

He wakes up the next morning caked in his own humanity. He can’t think straight. Shower it is, that should wake him up. Clean him off. Once he is in under the water he watches the red run down the drain. (Does blood run through him the same way the blood runs through those pipes? Is he still a machine? Is this not proof?)

Enough. Hands shaking, he reaches for a towel and heads to his room.

That is how John finds him.

“Sherlock… What are those?”

The detective whips around to face John, which only makes it possible for him to see the cuts that run across Sherlock’s chest and shins and upper arms.

“Oh God, Sherlock. What have you done?”

“I-I can explain.”

“Go on, then.”

Machine, freak, lonely, he says.

He cries when the whispers reach him. (Sherlock, human, human, I am here. I am never letting go.)


End file.
